Return to the Nine Kingdoms

15

Rose
I'd never really understood the rules of Mirror Messaging, as they were told to me. Really, they were never told to me at all—I just had to guess from what Dad told me had happened to him and what they knew had happened to the Troll King, Relish, when the Evil Queen summoned them.
"You're remembering wrong," Mom had told him once, interrupting his favorite bedtime story—the one where he saved the day. "It has to rhyme. Otherwise the Mirror just kind of sits there and doesn't do anything."
Always a poet and dreamer, Dad came up with a different rhyme that was used to summon various people in his stories. He'd shared so many tales from both before Mom and after, that I could never keep them straight. I was also either a toddler or very young, in any case, so my memory couldn't recall the details perfectly.
So, as Ferd was trudging through low-tide and trying to pull his little rowboat to the shore of the Sixth Kingdom, I was still blissfully seated on the bench and entertaining Edgar to keep both of our minds off of the terror of the churning sea. Most of the little trek we'd taken had been smooth sailing, so to speak, but Ferd's calluses hands had gotten tired of the rowing, and, not used to the extra weight in the boat, he'd let the dips of the oars slip a few times and sent the boat rocking. I'd gotten the idea that he didn't expect me to offer any help—some kind of fairytale chivalry, I suspected—but when he flatly denied that he needed any help, I'd turned my attention to Edgar. The poor thing had gotten a little drenched and I was starting to wonder why he was so skeletally thin.
"Edgar seems to do a lot for you," I'd mentioned to Ferd when we were just crossing the outcrop he'd mentioned before. "Do you even feed him? He's so skinny!"
"Edgar can take care of himself," Ferd had said with a shrug. "And being skinny helps him get in and out of places. Do you think he might have slipped in so easily to your cell if he were carrying around a few more bulges?"
I thought that made sense, but I still felt sorry for my new friend, Mr. Edgar Rat. I fed him some of the remaining nuts and fruits from the supplies Ferd had given and felt my stomach heave shortly thereafter as the rowboat came into the shallows and pitched us all forward. Ferd had stowed the oars and immediately jumped out, splashing chilly seawater at Edgar and me. Just as I was starting to find the way to my feet, a ringing in my ears brought me curled into a tight ball.
"What's the matter?" Ferd yelled from the bow.
I couldn't see him but the boat lurched again and he grunted as it likely collided with his midsection. The ringing in my ears had amplified to a piercing, shattering sound, like thousands of pieces of broken glass being scraped over metal. Edgar was just as confused and placed his gentle little paws on my bare arm and raised his tiny face to sniff at my ear. I had covered them and forced myself to keep my eyes open but the sound was so grating, I could feel tears in my eyes. Ferd climbed back into the boat and it sank further into the sand at an angle, which I fell into.
"What's wrong?" Ferd's voice was far away even though he was right in front of me. He pulled at my arms with both hands but couldn't dislodge them from my ears.
I screamed, then—I couldn't control it and I couldn't stop once I started. It wasn't a pain that I could put into words and in the back of my mind I thought I might be screaming either to drown it out or out of exasperation that it wouldn't stop. In the middle of the noise, I could hear another faraway sound that felt familiar. With the sound came the feeling of warmth and, strangely, the scent of freshly baked canapés.
"Mom?" I cried out in the middle of a scream.
I had closed my eyes but opened them to look around for her—I was sure she was in the boat. Ferd's perplexed expression was mixed with an intense worry, but I looked past him, still clutching my hands to my ears. I called out for her again and then I tried for Dad.
"Honey?" Mom's voice was distant but seemed clearer. The sounds of breaking, scraping glass had subsided the smallest amount, and I began to hear the other, more natural sounds of the sea.
"Mom?" I called again.
"It's a message, Rosebud," Dad's voice called.
Ferd, still lost and with a tilted head and gaping mouth, suddenly sparked into action. He grabbed my right arm and pulled me fully from my seat and forced me to lean over the edge of the boat.
"I'm not going to hurl," I mumbled, thinking just the opposite.
"No," Ferd whispered. "Look in the water."
The surface of the water was still choppy from the rocking of the boat, but as I focused on it, I noticed that on the shimmering surface was an image that I recognized.
"Rose?" Mom called. I could hear a waver in her voice. "Rose can you see me?"
"...yes," I said, feeling a little sick leaning over the boat's rail.
"Oh, honey! I'm so sorry!" Mom instantly launched into a high-speed explanation about summoning in a Messaging Mirror when there was no receiving Mirror and I tried to listen to everything carefully, but, mostly, I was just happy to hear her voice.
"I'm sorry too, Mom. Dad," I told them quietly. Bubbles in the water obscured their faces a bit, but I could see the terrified expressions there and that had been the last thing I'd wanted. "I didn't mean for this to happen."
"That's okay, honey. That's totally..." Mom started. "Okay, well it's not totally okay and we are going to talk about this just as soon as we get back home."
Dad interrupted her as best he could but she kept rambling about how much danger I was in, how much danger I'd put myself in, and how much danger I was going to be in once she got her hands on me.
"And who's that?"
I glanced behind me. Ferd was leaning over my shoulder so much that I imagined it looked like I had two heads. Edgar had run up and perched himself on Ferd's shoulder.
"Oh, that's Edgar. He's sweet. Eats a lot of nuts," I joked.
"A boy who eats a lot of nuts?" Dad asked.
Ferd cleared his throat. "That's the rat, sir," he said nervously.
A furious squeaking sounded at my ear and I turned around to watch Ferd and Edgar begin a quiet and one-sided argument.
"I know you're not just 'the rat'. No. No I don't think it's an appropriate..."
Ferd turned back to the Mirror in the water and nodded his head toward Edgar. "Edgar is not, in fact, just the rat. He is pleased to meet you, Wolf. And you, Virginia. As am I."
While Mom continued to look confused, Dad bowed his head in return and smiled respectfully.
"And you are?" Mom asked again.
"Ferd," Ferd announced. "Uh, Ferdinand. But—"
"No one calls him that," I added. "He helped me escape the Trolls."
Mom let out a small scream but I could tell she was relieved. "Escape!" She beamed. "Did they see you leave? Are you hurt? Oh my God, your face!"
As if seeing it for the first time, I could see Mom grab onto the edges of her Mirror to pull it close. It looked odd to see her clutch onto the water and hold it like it was a solid thing.
"I'm okay, I'm okay," I told her, lying. My lip still burned, my ribs ached, and the back of my head was still pretty sore. I hoped that I looked worse than I felt, but then I thought, for my parents' sake, it might be better the other way around.
"Trolls can't swim and they're terrible at rowing," Ferd cut in, leaning in over my shoulder again.
Mom and Dad were definitely thrown by this, but Dad got there first. "The Trolls aren't following them," he whispered, translating not so quiet to Mom.
"Are you sure? They went all that way to find you," Mom insisted. "Not that you wouldn't have landed right in their laps if they'd just given you a minute."
"Virginia," Dad sing-song-ed. "You're saying those things out loud."
Ferd guffawed in a strange, nervous way and I noticed that he was leaning more and more into what must have been the frame for Mom and Dad's view.
"D'you mind?" I asked, leaning away from him.
"Rose?" Mom whined and she appeared to shake the Mirror she was holding. "Rose, are you there?"
As she shook, the image on the water shook as well and the ringing in my ears returned.
"Stop...stop," I begged her by waving my hands over the water. I felt my stomach start to rumble and even the innocent little fruits and nuts there were threatening to hurl themselves in the sea.
"Rose, honey," Mom said. "I don't think we can keep this Message going much longer."
Her voice was breaking up a bit, but not in the staticky way that it would over a telephone or glitchy way like in a stuck video transmission. The tinkling sound of breaking glass was threatening to break my mind apart and it seemed that we were about to lose our connection.
"Get to the Sixth Kingdom!" Ferd shouted into the water for me and did his best to wave attention to Mom and Dad—they seemed further away than before, like a cloud was passing over them.
"The Sixth?" Dad called out. "What are you doing..."
The Message broke apart after that and I left what was undigested in my stomach in the sea where it had been. And some in the boat. And some on Ferd's pant legs.
He pulled me from the rowboat and helped me get onto the shore where the sand was cool to the touch and the water was lapping calmly. I didn't care that my jeans were getting soaked, that the t-shirt I wore that had been great for June in Virginia was clinging to my skin as if it were the thing that was cold and wanted me to warm it. My feet ached from the walk and the chill that held them—walking over sea-rock and sand hadn't been a problem for me since, when I did run with the moon, I liked the feel of skin to earth. I didn't care for much of anything and all I wanted was to lay there. Sleep had never sounded so good.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Ferd's voice, faraway and calming, as if I were a horse needing to be soothed. "Let's get you on your feet, Lady Rose."
The Lady part of what he said snapped me a bit from my sleepiness and I found myself being tugged up from the sand where I had collapsed, face-first. Each of Ferd's hands were under my arms and he was lifting me, bodily.
"I'm no Lady," I yawned lazily.
"Yes, yes," Ferd dismissed. "Up you get. There. There you are."
Once standing I was still a little woozy and nearly pitched forward but Ferd caught me about the waist. He forced me to meet his eyes and a fleeting appreciation for their green brilliance brought on a dreamy smile to my face. Before I could say anything embarrassing, I quickly shook myself from whatever sleep had hold of me.
"Thank...you," Ferd said, unsure.
"Thank me for what?"
He paused and flexed his eyebrows into an arch. "You said I have pretty eyes."
"When did I say that?"
"Just now? You...oh, oh I see."
I could feel that my cheeks were flushed with red. The dating pool back home had been small, but I wasn't new to the game—it'd just been a while. I felt the hairs in my tail bristle just so slightly and a bubble of nervous bile-gas filled my mouth.
"I should have warned you, I'm sorry. This place..." Ferd gestured to the sandy beach that met up with a dense line of trees a good distance from the shore. "It has this quality about it. Dreamy. Lovey-dovey kind of stuff."
My senses cleared, I pulled back from Ferd's grip on my waist as subtly as I could. "Like the Swamp?"
Ferd was confused. "The Swamp?"
I nodded, knowingly. "The singing mushrooms, the swamp water you're not supposed to drink..."
"Oh! The Elven Kingdom. I'm surprised you know about that place," Ferd said as he slapped one of his newly freed hands to his forehead. "But, no. Nothing like that. Although you probably shouldn't eat or drink anything here without checking with me first."
"And this is the Sixth Kingdom?"
Ferd stepped back from me to face the trees far ahead with some kind of pride. He had both of his hands on his hips and Edgar had scurried from the boat and had reattached himself to Ferd's left shoulder. Standing there, the pair of them looked like some kind of conquering pirate with his trusty animal sidekick.
"Home to the Sleeping Queen, it has been long forgotten. Some seventy years, they say, it has been sleeping."
An odd feeling of relief washed over me and I realized that, according to all of the stories, I should have been cursed with the sleeping sickness right about then. I pointed down to the sand and drew Ferd's attention with a shout.
"Was I about to be cursed?"
"Oh yes," Ferd said plainly. "Much like the Swamp that you spoke of, falling asleep here would have dire consequences."
He twisted his face to look at the sky for a moment and I realized that he was puzzling something out.
"It might be beneficial to some, however," he continued, "since you would be trapped, as you are, sleeping for at least another thirty years, your beauty in tact once the curse is broken."
"My beauty," I mused. I had to recover from my earlier fumble, but I also couldn't resist.
Ferd took a step closer and reached out a hand, placing it on my chin, and extended a thumb over my bottom lip. A whisper of air—not quite a gasp—escaped me.
"Although, the bruises and cuts that you've earned so far might also be retained through your sleep. So you might wake up refreshed but ugly on the other side of thirty years," he said, analyzing my broken skin with the green eyes I'd apparently complimented earlier.
He let his hand drop and smiled, pleased that he'd made his point, I guessed, and then pointed from the rowboat to the trees.
"Give me two minutes to tie up my boat, and then I'll show you into the camp. We'll be safe there and we can plan how we'll get you to the Thorn Wall and back to your parents."
Without waiting for me to reply, he left me standing in the sand while he returned to the rowboat, surreptitiously washed out where I'd been sick, and set about tying up the boat. He moved it further inland and dug a hole in the sand with one oar as a shovel, then buried the head of the same oar into the pit. The result was a steady post to which he was able to tie the lead from the bow—he made practiced movements and I could tell that he'd done the same thing many times before. He retrieved the empty canteen from the box where I'd left it but left the empty pouch that had contained the fruits and nuts.
"So, a camp? Like with other people?" I asked when he returned to where I was on the beach.
He made a thinking, stalling kind of noise and then shook his head. The canteen had a strap that had been coiled around the bottle and he took the time to unwind it before pulling the strap over his head to let the empty canteen bounce at his tailbone. "Not many, no. I'm a bit of an oddity around here and it took me a few tries to learn most of the rules."
I scowled. Rules to remember. There were always rules to remember. It was bad enough trying to remember what sports teams were favored in which county back home and now I'd have to keep a set of rules straight in my mind. I figured if I didn't, I'd probably end up dead.
"I'll help you," Ferd offered. He didn't extend his arm toward me to take, but the look on his face and the stiffness with which he moved ahead of me on some invisible path through the sand made me think that he was denying some instinct. "It's pretty easy to remember the biggest one—don't go to sleep."
"And how did you learn that one?"
"I had mostly guessed it already. But on my first trip, I had no idea about the berries," Ferd said.
"The berries?"
"On the Thorn Wall. Or, really, any kind of thorn bush that you see...you can and should eat some of its berries. They're all over the Kingdom."
I wasn't getting the correlation. "Should eat them?"
"I was half-cursed when one of the locals...you might meet one or two of them in the camp, but I doubt it at this time of year. Anyway, one of the No-Sleep came upon me, mid-nap, and forced some thorn berries into my mouth. Another five minutes and I wouldn't be standing here today."
He paused. He scanned the tree line that we were coming up to and pointed over to a clump of trees that stood out due to a large and towering mangrove at its center.
"I'd be over there, actually. Sound asleep."
"So the berries are like little caffeine pills, I take it."
"If caffeine keeps you from falling asleep for an eternity, then yes."